And wait not long, for I am almost there. 
’Tis but a gasp, and I shall pass the bound
’Twixt life and death—­through death to life again—­
Where sorrow cometh never.  Pangs and pains
Of flesh or spirit will not pierce me there;
And two will greet me from the jasper walls—­
God’s angels—­with a song of holy peace,
And haste to meet me at the pearly gate,
And kiss the death-damp from my silent lips,
And lead me through the golden avenues—­
Singing Hosanna—­to the Great White Throne.”

So there he paused and calmly closed his eyes,
And silently I sat and held his hand. 
After a time, when we were left alone,
He spoke again with calmer voice and said: 
“Captain, you oft have asked my history,
And I as oft refused.  There is no cause
Why I should longer hold it from my friend
Who reads the closing chapter.  It may teach
One soul to lean upon the arm of Christ—­
That hope and happiness find anchorage
Only in heaven.  While my lonesome life
Saw death but dimly in the dull distance
My lips were sealed to the unhappy tale;
Under my pride I hid a heavy heart.

“I was ambitious in my boyhood days,
And dreamed of fame and honors—­misty fogs
That climb at morn the ragged cliffs of life,
Veiling the ragged rocks and gloomy chasms,
And shaping airy castles on the top
With bristling battlements and looming towers;
But melt away into ethereal air
Beneath the blaze of the mid-summer sun,
Till cliffs and chasms and all the ragged rocks
Are bare, and all the castles crumbled away.

“There winds a river ’twixt two chains of hills—­
Fir-capped and rugged monuments of time;
A level vale of rich alluvial land,
Washed from the slopes through circling centuries,
And sweet with clover and the hum of bees,
Lies broad between the rugged, somber hills. 
Beneath a shade of willows and of elms
The river slumbers in this meadowy lap. 
Down from the right there winds a babbling branch,
Cleaving a narrower valley through the hills. 
A grand bald-headed hill-cone on the right
Looms like a patriarch, and above the branch
There towers another.  I have seen the day
When those bald heads were plumed with lofty pines. 
Below the branch and near the river bank,
Hidden among the elms and butternuts,
The dear old cottage stands where I was born. 
An English ivy clambers to the eaves;
An English willow planted by my hand
Now spreads its golden branches o’er the roof
Not far below the cottage thrives a town,
A busy town of mills and merchandise—­
Belle Meadows, fairest village of the vale. 
Behind it looms the hill-cone, and in front
The peaceful river winds its silent way. 
Beyond the river spreads a level plain—­
Once hid with somber firs—­a tangled marsh—­
Now beautiful with fields and cottages,
And sweet in spring-time with the blooming plum,